The present invention is directed to an antenna (spatial) processing useful in wireless communication applications, such as short-range wireless applications.
Composite Beamforming (CBE) is an antenna processing technique in which a first communication device, having a plurality of antennas, weights a signal to be transmitted by its antennas to a second communication device also having a plurality of antennas. Similarly, the second communication device weights and combines the received signals received by its antennas. A multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) optimized communication system is defined by CBF. The transmit weights and receive weights are determined to optimize the link margin between the devices, thereby significantly extending the range of communication between the two communication devices. Techniques related to composite beamforming are the subject matter of above-identified commonly assigned co-pending application.
There is room for still further enhancing this CBF technique to optimize cost and implementation issues at the expense of only slight degradation in performance. Such a solution is extremely valuable in manufacturing a cost-effective integrated circuit solution.